Is Content Really King?

Since the dawn of the world wide web, publishers have been told one Golden Rule over and over – content is king. This mantra has been repeated by everyone from Bill Gates to Matt Cutts.

Now that we’ve moved on Web 2.0 (or 3.0 or whatever we’re actually at) some SEO experts are wondering if the Golden Rule is still golden? That question was recently broached by Tyler Thursby over at Search Engine Journal in a column titled, Content is King: The Greatest Lie Ever Told in SEOand it’s well worth discussing.

It’s important to note that at no point does Thursby, or any other credible SEO authority, advocate a return to the pre-Panda days of low-grade content. What he does advocate is a more holistic view of SEO that’s built on and around high quality content.

One of Thursby’s easiest-to-act-on tips is to prioritize pages. In his view, this means going after the low-hanging keywords you rank well on, even if they’re a little further down the list.

Long tail keywords like these are an aspect of SEO that most web publishers have overlooked, but their value is visible in a slew of first page results.

Thursby also suggests that web publisher, “take control of their own indexes.” This method involves spending some quality time with the Google Search Console. Among its many benefits are the ability to confirm that your pages are actually getting crawled.

At the end of the day content is still a huge factor and there’s really no substitute for producing high quality content on a regular basis. At the same time, you can’t assume that good content is the only weapon in your SEO arsenal.